How to Use Social Media to Advance Your Career

ROSABETH MOSS KANTER: Here’s what I tell ambitious linkers, posters, tweeters and other social-media users among my students and clients: Asking about using social media to advance your career is the wrong question. Think instead about advancing the cause, the company, or the profession.

Social media is already pretty self-serving. Case in point: selfies. The very term suggests selfishness, self-centeredness. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Give something to others. Your values, insights, and accomplishments should be highlighted through actions. Report the actions in a straightforward, non-hyped manner, and your virtues will speak for themselves. Then when you need to ask a network for help—finding a job, attracting funding for a venture, getting attention for a book—people will be more willing to help because they’ve experienced something positive. Social media helps you reach strangers, but strangers don’t have to engage with you unless they want to.
Second, with career in mind, keep the personal stuff separate. Personal is for family and friends, and through a medium that doesn’t leave a permanent record. It should be widely known that indiscreet photos or inflammatory remarks can come back to bite you, but it also seems to be widely forgotten. (How could former Congressman Anthony Weiner have failed to know this? Or the aide to Governor Christie who wrote an email calling for “a little traffic disruption” in Fort Lee, N.J.)

The other thing to remember is that social media can eat a lot of time better spent actually doing the job rather than tweeting about it. The best thing you can do for your career is to accomplish something.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter (@RosabethKanter) holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specializes in strategy, innovation and leadership for change.